Requirements

At the time of writing, this guide only applies to The Sims 4 on Windows.

If you haven’t already, please run The Sims 4 at least once before modding it.

Getting Set Up

To begin, open up Vortex and navigate to the games section. If you don’t already see The Sims 4 under the “Managed” tab, check the “Discovered” section. Use the “Manage” button on the game tile to add it to your managed games.

Installing Mods

For The Sims 4, there are two different types of mods.

Type

Description

Mods

This is the default installation type for mods. A mod will normally include a file with the extension ".package". In some cases there may also be additional files packed in the same folder as the package, these will also be extracted with the package to the Mods/Vortex Mods directory.

Tray Items

Items created in-game and shared with others are treated differently to standard mods. Vortex finds tray mods using the ".blueprint" extensions. It will take both the blueprint file and any other files in the same directory (excluding package files) and unpack them to the Tray folder.

To download any of these mods click either the "Vortex" button in the top right of the mod page or the "Mod Manager Download" button on the files tab.

Once all the files are in Vortex, install them and ensure the mods are deployed. You can then start the game using the play button in the top-left of Vortex.

Troubleshooting

Can I stop the admin prompts when deploying mods?

The admin prompts are caused by Vortex's Symlink deployment. This is often selected as the default, however, you can switch to Hardlink deployment under "Settings", then "Mods". You can learn more about the different deployment options here.